A more detailed version of this dispatch will be made available once I'm back in the states.
Somewhere over the Taklamakan Desert, a sibilant-voiced stewardess handed out cups of buckwheat tea. The onscreen entertainment, which had hitherto consisted entirely of the cooking channel, came to an end, and as we descended into Kashgar, someone offered me green figs. Outside of Xinjiang's second-largest airport, electric cars and horse-drawn buggies bespattered with rustic mire shared the tree-lined speedway. Kashgar is closer to Baghdad than Beijing, but all of China uses one time zone, so at 8:30 PM, the sun would not set for another two hours.
I chatted with the owner of my hotel, who moved here thirty years ago from Sichuan. Like many of the region's Han Chinese, she came to Xinjiang during Jiang Zemin's “Open Up the West” 西部大开发 campaign, which began in 1999. This strategy aimed to develop western and interior regions of the country by boosting socio-economic conditions, improving weak infrastructure, and implementing better relations with ethnic minorities.
Many of the Han people I talked to discussed how, before they came to Xinjiang, their families had nothing to eat, but now they lived good lives. For them, Xinjiang represented not just opportunity, but an escape from destitution and unimaginable poverty. Another guest interrupted our conversation to ask the front desk to borrow the hotel's communal nail clippers, which I learned is apparently a thing in China.
The next morning, my driver, Yinqiang, picked me up bright and early at 9 AM. I found him after posting an advertisement on Xiaohongshu, a social media app designed primarily for teenage girls, and we quickly negotiated a rate, route, and trip playlist (the latter consisted almost entirely of Dao Lang). Yinqiang was born in Yili, but like the hotel owner, his native homeland is Sichuan. He told me he doesn't speak Uyghur, but he knows every insult.
Yinqiang started working at age 14 as a tailor, earning between 100-120 yuan per month (or $110–140 in today's USD). As we drove, we talked about his life, family, and goals. When I asked him what the biggest problem facing China today was, he laughed. "There are no problems in China!" When I asked about Xinjiang's heavy police presence and surveillance infrastructure, he shrugged. "Xinjiang is the safest place in China!"
Outside Kashgar, the landscape quickly changed, from red mountains to gray glacier-fed rivers, from verdant valleys and turquoise lakes to Aeolian dunes. The formidable Pamirs were the last mountain range on earth to be mapped, and driving through them, I can see why.
The Karakoram Highway was built by China and Pakistan from 1959 to 1979, and it's incredibly smooth and well-maintained. Officially, the road was constructed to promote trade and friendship, but some Indian defense experts have argued its true purpose was to allow rapid military movement or even serve as an invasion route into the Indian subcontinent. Along the way, we met lots of domestic tourists driving RVs decked out with Chinese flags and donning culturally-questionable dreadlocks.
Every hour or so, we stopped for yet another passport check, and also once because there were some police officers handing out free tea (it's a funny play on words in Chinese). While I groaned about all the cameras, Yinqiang flashed a toothy grin: "it's only bad if you're a wanted criminal (通缉犯)!"
Here you can see the Muztagh Ata, a massive gneiss-covered dome known as the "Father of Ice Mountains" in Tajik (one of my nicknames in high school). At the base of this mighty mountain, I learned that I receive a warmer reception here telling people I'm Russian rather than American, as someone immediately treated me to yak meat skewer and exclaimed, "я тебя люблю!" (I love you!). As an interesting side note, from 1934 to 1942, Xinjiang functioned as a de facto Soviet client state ruled by a local warlord, and from 1944 to 1949, the Soviet Union even backed a separatist regime in the province's north.
Eventually, we reached Tashkurgan, the westernmost town in China, tucked into the Pamir plateau near the borders of Tajikistan and Pakistan. Some scholars believe this is the site of the legendary “Stone Tower” mentioned by Ptolemy in his Geography, the halfway point between Europe and China, where Silk Road travelers paused to rest and trade. The name Tashkurgan itself means “Stone Fortress” in Tajik, and the ruins of that fort still rest atop a bedrock outcrop overlooking the town. Going back over 2,000 years, local kings used the fortress to levy taxes on passing traders, offering protection and caravanserais (temporary lodging) in return.
Today, the city boasts a lively outdoor plaza where locals practice Tajik dance and eat yak meat hot pot. We saw far more Uyghur police officers than I was expecting to see. At The Hunza Kitchen Pakistani restaurant, staff greeted me in Wakhi, a language spoken by an ethnic minority living across the Pamirs in Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China. They were very pleased to learn that not only does Palo Alto have a Pakistani restaurant (Zareens), but it's one of our most popular spots!
The next morning, Yinqiang and I drove further west toward the Khunjerab Pass, which is 5,000 meters above sea level. Despite my pleas, police officers stopped us about 2 kilometers from the border, informing me that foreigners are not allowed to go any further. I bought some tea eggs and shared them with a stray dog. Hélas.
We took a different route back to Kashgar, at one point driving through the Panlong “Dragon Spine" ancient road, an impossibly circuitous ribbon of asphalt clinging to the mountainside with blue fingernails. As he weaved in out of lanes to pass other drivers, Yinqiang's anger rose proportionately to how expensive the other cars were. "How can you drive a Land Cruiser and still be scared of the road?" he muttered before swerving past a shiny SUV with Zhejiang license plates.
At the Karakol Lake, I met a young Kyrgyz man, Ardakbek, who proudly displayed his American-style belt. He asked which UFC fighters I liked best and was very disappointed when I couldn't name a single one. "One day, I want to go to Texas to see the cowboys!" he exclaimed. We also talked about Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers, but we eventually got onto heavier topics. He asked me if I knew what America did to the Native Americans. Shocked that he had brought this up, I nodded my head. "Of course I know about that," I responded. "Most Americans think it's a very dark part of our history." I asked whether he saw any similarities to China's treatment of minorities in Xinjiang, and he shook his head. “What Japan did to us (referring to the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s)," he said, “that is what America did to its Native peoples.”
We departed but soon stopped to buy more apricots and pick black mulberries from the side of the road. Yinqiang bought a truly inordinate amount of yak meat jerky, like at least 20 or 30 bags. At one point, he pulled me aside to whisper: “potatoes are called yang yu (洋芋；foreign tuber) in Xinjiang,” as if it were some kind of secret. We departed, and he promised if I ever came back to Xinjiang, we could become friends and go out drinking together.
Back in Kashgar, I met up with my dear friends Marcelo and Fiona, and we wandered through what remains of the old town. Kashgar used to be one of the best-preserved Islamic cities in Central Asia, a 2,000-year-old warren of winding lanes, clay-brick homes, and sunbaked teahouses. But starting in 2009, the Chinese government began a program of “renovation and reconstruction," citing seismic risk after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan. By 2014, an estimated 85% of the Old City had been razed and rebuilt. Sterile concrete buildings now simulate the original mud-brick aesthetic, only now, they have better plumbing and built-in mounts for surveilance cameras.
Signs implored residents to “please speak the national language,” but I don't think they even need to ask. The kids we interacted with, regardless of their ethnicity, mostly preferred speaking Chinese, and I learned that Uyghur isn't really taught in schools anymore. Virtually all of the locals we met thought Marcelo was Uyghur and that Fiona, his girlfriend, was "the most beautiful woman they had ever seen." I think Celo walked with a little more spring in his step after hearing that.
The city's mosques felt like "museumized versions of living culture" as opposed to active places of worship.
Even at the Afaq Khoja Mausoleum, one of the holiest Muslim sites in Xinjiang, we saw no pilgrims but did for some reason find many ostriches.
At 10 AM one morning, we went to the Kashgar city gate to watch a traditional Uyghur musical performance, but the performers' microphones weren't actually plugged in. Under the beating sun and through the throngs of people and sea of selfie sticks, what we saw looked like Kashgar and sounded like Kashgar, but mostly felt like someone was selling a sanitized version of Kashgar back to us.
I hope the censors who read my email are lazy and didn't make it this far, but at any rate, I've used my best judgment. As always, thanks so much for reading. This was a complicated but extremely beautiful trip, and I'm so grateful for the kindness and warmth that everybody we met displayed. If you're interested in learning more about the region or my time here, I'm happy to talk offline or recommend some resources. Expect one more newsletter about Xinjiang soon, featuring Dhruv!
Until next time,
Michael